Fans of awful cinema have been enjoying a feast for the past 25 years. If legendarily bad movies can be seen as achievements, then there have been some truly titanic triumphs since 2001. Of course, bad characters are pretty much a requirement for a film to be awful—and over the last quarter of a century, there have even been several terrible characters from movies that are actually not all that bad.
Whatever the case, these terrible characters are perfect examples of lackluster writing, terrible acting, and bad directing, disservices to their respective movies in every way that counts. Whether they’re boring, annoying, inconsistent, poorly written or all of those things (and more) at once, the entries on this list are undeniably terrible characters from head to toe, masterclasses in how not to engage an audience.
10
Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) – The ‘Twilight’ Saga
It is an objective fact that Kristen Stewart is an immensely talented actress, but her breakout role in the Twilight Saga was quite a rough start for her career as a leading lady. From the page itself, Bella Swan has the charm and personality of a rock, and no matter how gifted a thespian Stewart is, even she couldn’t possibly make the character work.
No matter how one ranks the Twilight movies, they all have something in common, and it’s an entirely dull and uninteresting protagonist. Bella has no depth or agency, and typically feels like a self-absorbed extension of Robert Pattinson‘s Edward (who’s not much better himself in the role of the sparkling vampire). The Twilight saga has lots of strengths, but a well-written and well-performed protagonist isn’t one of them.
9
Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) – ‘Emilia Pérez’ (2024)
From the 2024-25 awards season to the present, it feels like most people have forgotten all about Emilia Pérez, and that’s probably for the better. This obnoxiously racist, transphobic, and misogynistic excuse for a musical has virtually no redeeming qualities, and that lack of redeeming qualities includes an atrocious protagonist that doesn’t deserve to be played by an actress as good as Zoe Saldaña.
Rita Mora Castro, a struggling attorney who helps a Mexican cartel leader fake her death in order to carry out a gender transition, has motivations and a code of ethics that flip-flop around with no rhyme or reason, depending on what the plot demands. She’s a character as unlikable as she is inconsistent, and not even Saldaña’s decent (though not Oscar-worthy) performance is able to elevate her out of that dark pit of badness.
8
General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) – The ‘Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy (2015-2019)
Star Wars may be the biggest and most popular science fiction media franchise in history, but that doesn’t mean it’s exempt from mistakes—and many fans would make the argument that Disney’s entire sequel trilogy is one such mistake. That may or may not be true, but something hard to deny is that the trilogy features one of the worst Star Wars characters ever: General Hux.
Domhnall Gleeson does all he possibly can with what little he’s given to work with, but the material is so atrocious that his acting abilities can only take Hux so far. The character is cartoonishly evil to the point of occasional unintentional comedy in The Force Awakens. The Last Jedi then makes him as laughably pathetic as possible before The Rise of Skywalker completely butchers his personality and motivations. Ultimately, Hux is a terrible character and the perfect representation of how the trilogy’s lack of direction affected everything.
7
Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) – ‘Jupiter Ascending’ (2015)
The Wachowski sisters‘Jupiter Ascendingis actually not nearly as bad as many make it sound, but it’s certainly not as great as the rest of their sci-fi work either. It’s a perfectly “not that bad” movie with some redeeming qualities that not enough people talk about. That said, the antagonist played byEddie Redmayne, is most definitely not one of those redeeming qualities.
Balem Abrasax is one of the worst-written movie characters played by great actors. Redmayne is actually one of the few performers in history who have been nominated for an Oscar (forThe Danish Girl) and a Razzie in the same year. The character’scampy over-the-top demeanor usually makes no sense, and doesn’t fit the tone of the movie whatsoever, and he never really poses a credible enough threat for the story’s heroes.
6
Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) – ‘Passengers’ (2016)
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